Speaking In Tongues
Guided by Voices

The Man Who Truly Understood Himself

by Daniel Levchin



I cut my arm yesterday. Working on the sight, where I work everyday, I cut my arm on a large metal rod. The foundation of a small cottage is started up by 6 cement blocks, forming a rectangle, and out of these blocks stick out metal rods, they are imbedded in concrete for strength of the foundation. The rods are usually dark orange/brown because they are outside and rust in the rain. Cleaning the foundation I cut my arm yesterday on one a large metal rod. I was shoveling the dirt away from the 6 blocks that are the foundation of the foundation and swung my arm grazing a dark orange/brown metal rod that stuck out of a concrete block of the foundation.
I did not feel much pain and it bled little, I cut my arm, however, and the cut was very deep and wide. But I decided not to see the doctor.
This morning I woke up and noticed my cut. It was a proper laceration, but it almost didn't bleed, just missed a vein by the elbow. What I noticed: it was filled up with white pus, liquidy. The cut was very wide and deep and there was a lot of pus, because it was filled up to the brim. I went to shower and forgot all about it since I felt little discomfort. But after the shower I looked at it and the pus had been washed out.
Tomorrow morning I woke up and noticed that the pus was back and there were bits of sticky brown. The cut itself seemed a bit more narrow. I went to my friend, look, I said. My body is trying to heal itself.


I wish my body was trying to heal itself. He said that. My body is trying to kill itself. I drink and then my body makes me puke at night, and my stomach kills me. My lungs never let me breathe. You're lucky, I wish my body was trying to heal itself. I went home and said - my body is trying to heal itself and I am interested. The day after tomorrow the cut was filled with white pus and it was slgihtly more narrow. I washed out the pus and pulled the cut apart and examined it thoroughly...
The next morning the pus and the brown bits were back, accompanied by bits of green on both sides of the cut and now it was obvious that its walls were trying to reunite. I washed out the pus and cleaned the cut, I pulled it apart and then stuck a little wooden stick into it. I found a wooden stick on the ground and stuck it inside the cut. I watched it all day, but nothing happened. My body healed itself during the night. And the stick fell out, so the next morning the situation was pussy again. I had to wash it out. I pull the cut apart hard so it started to bleed down on the bottom, where the two walls of the cut met.
I theorised, my mind is at war with my body. The blind body feels for the wound and pours medicine into it, like a faithful healer. But the clever mind is intrigued by this process. He wants to torture the body, if simply for his personal amusement. So he steals the medicine while the body is not looking, so to speak. My mind can see and is smart and funny. It had noticed that the body continues to pour medicine without tire and so he decided to indulge himself in this little game. And the body has no idea. Will it ever learn? I took a marker and colored all over the cut and it stung. My body, I thought, is disopatching a message to the mind. It screams in horror: "Something is terribly wrong! Our patient is feeling worse, it is hurting and there is a possibility that the ink of the marker is the cause of it!!!" My mind could not help but chuckle.
Then I thought, no, it is not the body that is the blind healer. The body is just a flunky! A tool! This battle can clearly be discerned as a struggle between two minds. My mind encompasses two minds. One is an older brother and the other, logic would have it, the younger. My sibling minds are at war, quite common for sibling behavior. The younger, so naive, does only what he is commanded, he heals and nurses. The older, weary of the entire routine, being a thinking organ, becomes restless and plays tricks and games.
On the contrary! I thought, it is the younger brother playing tricks and games, as younger brothers do when not yet privileged to perform the duties of older siblings, he is so envious. The older brother, wise and committed to his family, fully realizing his responsibilities, tries patiently to heal the most prized possession, the body. He relies on the predictability of his younger brother to eventually tire of the tricks and games and perhaps even wise up (although not likely) and help out.
I took out a blade then. I took out a blade and sliced my arm once again. I made a new cut, a perfect perpendicular to the old cut, which by now had been filled and washed out yet again. I understand now, I thought, is this not a fight between the good and the evil in my mind and body. And the evil is evil to the point that it is prepared to cause itself damage for the greater sake of evil. And the good! The good is willing to forgive the evil and repair the damages, despite all this trouble that his evil twin is causing him. I truly understood myself then.
But something moves me to reason in this fashion. Is there another part that stands to the side of the good and the evil? An impartial judge, sworn to observe and raise the good son and the evil son alike, without prejudice? Loving them both with the same love, carefully collecting their outstanding deeds in this ingenius scrapbook of the mind our leading psychologists call the subconscious. He is unable to command, but only to observe and theorise, hoping not to influence either one with his judgments, but only to learn from them. He is prepared to hold his peace for the sake of complete knowledge even if when it might lead to his own destruction in the bitter end.
Oh, what glory! The impartial judge understood himself now! He put a gun to his head and waited for orders...


But it could be that the impartial judge is pretending. He controls the good and the evil like hand puppets. Gives them names and replicas. And one day he'll tell you, but by then it's probably too late.